We had an early start today as we wanted to go to a nearby market in order to buy some fabric for our happy pants. When we got back to Fisheman's rest, we had our breakfast and then we were measured by the local tailor. We then climbed aboard Tilly the Truck and chugged our way down to Majete Safari park. However, on the way, Mother Hen (aka Julia) got told off for taking a photo whilst going through a police check point. We eventually arrived at the nature reserve where we put up our tents and had a quick lunch. We then jumped on the safari jeep and set off on our quest to find animals. We were very successful as we saw antelopes, warthogs, hartebeests, hippos, crocodiles and baboons. Our adventure ended on a high as we saw two groups of elephants and one group even saw an impala fight.
When we came back from our safari quest, we were escorted to the shop. Millie found some dungarees and decided to try them on. As you can see, they suited her very well!
Later in the afternoon, we had a BBQ of sausages and burgers, cooked by the lovely Mumma Bear (aka Julia again). We then ended this amazing day with s'mores toasted over a campfire and a game of Go Fish underneath a sky of beautiful stars.
Alice and Sai (Saia & co)
Pic to follow later
Sunday, 31 July 2016
Friday 29th July
Finding dory comes out today - no spoilers please! After another Chichewa lesson we are all improving, and we have learnt how to barter which should come in handy tomorrow in the market. Then we climbed into the alphabet bus and took the journey to the school for the final day of activities with the children. We had more intimate groups today as there were fewer children there. Seeing the children's excited faces when playing parachute games was amazing but being thrashed at netball by the Malawi girl guides wasn't so great.
Unfortunately, after serving porridge it was time to say goodbye to the school. The headmaster gathering the children together and making a thank you speech was very heartwarming but made us sad that we had to leave. We gave the school a book full of photos of the children and the bunting we made with the guides as a parting gift.
After lots of hugs and waves we returned to fisherman's rest for lunch. As some of us were very tired, Kay gave us the option to stay for rest or fix another bore hole. Those who chose to rest explored the local scenery or just slept for the whole afternoon! Kira, Ellie, Alice, Millie and Pearl fixed the bore hole, which was further away from where we have been before. In the centre of lots of mud huts the area was more rural. The local community came out to help, carrying our tools and pipes and sang us a welcome song; they were so happy to have us there. The village boys were staring, but once we got water out of the pump everyone cheered. The boys and guides helped put it back together whilst the village people spoke English to us. As we were leaving the boys asked Millie for her phone number but she kindly declined.
Everyone showered up and once Grace and Julia returned from food shopping in the market we had a very yummy dinner of stew and mash. Some of us took down tents for tomorrow in the dark whilst the others cleaned up.
In the evening we all chilled before discussing our trash and treasures then talking about what is going on this weekend.
Overall, another great day!
Mia, Kira and Millie
Unfortunately, after serving porridge it was time to say goodbye to the school. The headmaster gathering the children together and making a thank you speech was very heartwarming but made us sad that we had to leave. We gave the school a book full of photos of the children and the bunting we made with the guides as a parting gift.
After lots of hugs and waves we returned to fisherman's rest for lunch. As some of us were very tired, Kay gave us the option to stay for rest or fix another bore hole. Those who chose to rest explored the local scenery or just slept for the whole afternoon! Kira, Ellie, Alice, Millie and Pearl fixed the bore hole, which was further away from where we have been before. In the centre of lots of mud huts the area was more rural. The local community came out to help, carrying our tools and pipes and sang us a welcome song; they were so happy to have us there. The village boys were staring, but once we got water out of the pump everyone cheered. The boys and guides helped put it back together whilst the village people spoke English to us. As we were leaving the boys asked Millie for her phone number but she kindly declined.
Everyone showered up and once Grace and Julia returned from food shopping in the market we had a very yummy dinner of stew and mash. Some of us took down tents for tomorrow in the dark whilst the others cleaned up.
In the evening we all chilled before discussing our trash and treasures then talking about what is going on this weekend.
Overall, another great day!
Mia, Kira and Millie
Thursday, 28 July 2016
Thursday 28th July
Thursday 28th July
This morning we went to the same school we went to yesterday except for Becca and Justine due to un-arrived baggage on Monday. We joined the school in their assembly and sung some songs and sang their national anthem. Our activity pairs got sent to spend time with different classes, we sung some more songs with them and read books with them. We even played cat and mouse with them with the parachute. We fed the children their porridge and we then spent some time with the girl guides at that school singing songs giving them badges and friendship bracelets. In the afternoon 6 people- 5 guides and 1 leader were sent to make some environmentally friendly stoves like yesterday and the rest of the group painted window frames in vibrant colours. In the evening we made are own pizzas in the pizza oven. We also had a band and we joined in with the music by singing and dancing with another group that was here with us from a school.
Becca and Justine bags were delayed, and so didn't arrive with everyone else's at the Malawian airport on Monday, therefore they have both been wearing other people's clothes, borrowing their toiletries and even their teddy bears! So today they both went into Blantyre instead of the school to collect their bags from the airport. So to start their journey into the unknown they paid a visit to the South African Airways Office, where a surprise was waiting for them. Thinking they were going in to find out where there bags were, they instead found out that there bags were sitting in the Airport waiting to be collected. They both then traveled to the airport, where Becca hugged her bag, she was very happy! Afterwards they went to the supermarket, super-rite, where they topped up on the essentials- like crisps and chocolate spread. Before their return they got some chips from kips, the Malawian equivalent to McDonald's!
Becca
Today when we went to the school, Mia and I taught the youngest class 'head, shoulders,knees and toes' which they got quite quickly. We also read them two books and went through some animals with them and got them to do the animal noises. Mia and I also started doing cat and mouse with the children and in the end most of the other groups joined in. In the afternoon I joined in with the painting window frames as yesterday I had built a stove. There was children at the school we were painting window frames for, and they soon got friendly with us. I had a few following me around and wanting to high five or wave at me every 5 seconds and I then got more cuddles and attention when me and Lucy pulled out are cameras and they were so fascinated and wanted there pictures taken and especially fascinated with Lucy's Polaroid camera and argued about who had the picture afterwards. We then joined another school with pizza night and me and other guides in our group joined in with the dancing and singing. - Ellie.S.
This morning we went to the same school we went to yesterday except for Becca and Justine due to un-arrived baggage on Monday. We joined the school in their assembly and sung some songs and sang their national anthem. Our activity pairs got sent to spend time with different classes, we sung some more songs with them and read books with them. We even played cat and mouse with them with the parachute. We fed the children their porridge and we then spent some time with the girl guides at that school singing songs giving them badges and friendship bracelets. In the afternoon 6 people- 5 guides and 1 leader were sent to make some environmentally friendly stoves like yesterday and the rest of the group painted window frames in vibrant colours. In the evening we made are own pizzas in the pizza oven. We also had a band and we joined in with the music by singing and dancing with another group that was here with us from a school.
Becca and Justine bags were delayed, and so didn't arrive with everyone else's at the Malawian airport on Monday, therefore they have both been wearing other people's clothes, borrowing their toiletries and even their teddy bears! So today they both went into Blantyre instead of the school to collect their bags from the airport. So to start their journey into the unknown they paid a visit to the South African Airways Office, where a surprise was waiting for them. Thinking they were going in to find out where there bags were, they instead found out that there bags were sitting in the Airport waiting to be collected. They both then traveled to the airport, where Becca hugged her bag, she was very happy! Afterwards they went to the supermarket, super-rite, where they topped up on the essentials- like crisps and chocolate spread. Before their return they got some chips from kips, the Malawian equivalent to McDonald's!
Becca
Today when we went to the school, Mia and I taught the youngest class 'head, shoulders,knees and toes' which they got quite quickly. We also read them two books and went through some animals with them and got them to do the animal noises. Mia and I also started doing cat and mouse with the children and in the end most of the other groups joined in. In the afternoon I joined in with the painting window frames as yesterday I had built a stove. There was children at the school we were painting window frames for, and they soon got friendly with us. I had a few following me around and wanting to high five or wave at me every 5 seconds and I then got more cuddles and attention when me and Lucy pulled out are cameras and they were so fascinated and wanted there pictures taken and especially fascinated with Lucy's Polaroid camera and argued about who had the picture afterwards. We then joined another school with pizza night and me and other guides in our group joined in with the dancing and singing. - Ellie.S.
Wednesday, 27 July 2016
Wednesday 27th July
Today was our second day volunteering in the schools. On our way to the school we travelled in the Fishermen's Rest bus which was very bumpy. However, we learnt some Malawian songs for example; we bealipe 'o' fanana. Then we were greeted by the headmaster of he school during assembly and we started to sing traditional guide songs to the children, doing actions and dance movements which caused them to join in with us. We were then split into our pairs where we ran two sets of activities be did well known games such as Goat, Goat, Chicken (which is the Malawian version of Duck, Duck, Goose) and grandma's footsteps. We also had the chance to teach songs to the local guides and they taught us some in return. Ellie.S and Mia taught some campfire songs which sounded amazing. In the afternoon we split into three groups and some painted Windows, some fixed a bore hole and a couple of us went to build a fuel efficient stove for a family.
"My favourite part of visiting the schools in the morning was running my activity with Lucy, where we were being taught games with balls by the children. I also love how much they enjoyed the bubbles and the Polaroid camera. In the afternoon, I went with Julia, Ellie S and Becca to make a stay for a family in their home. It was very hot and dirty but it was well worth the hard work as we were really happy because we have made a positive impact on this family's life and we were proud of the result" - Olivia
"Moni zingalinga Sai. Ndafukuna ndakwera njinga. I enjoyed learning some Malawian Guide songs and teaching them to do the handclap for Edelweiss which was very fun then we went to a school which has been developed and built so we went there to paint the windows and fix a bore hole which was broken because of there being a lollipop stick being stuck in the drain pipes. We also taught some kids English and played football with them we also improved and developed our Chichewa vocabulary" - Sai
Tuesday 26th July
Today was our first day of volunteering. We started by having a quick lesson of the local language. Afterwards we headed to a local school via a bumpy road with an amazing views of the local mountain range. We were greeted by huge smiles, waves and lots of songs and dancing. After we introduced ourselves, we were shown some of their favourite big group games which were great fun. Then we spilt the children, whose ages ranged from approximately two to sixteen, into six groups and we did activities with them. There was more of a language barrier than we had expected so it was quite difficult to do some of the activities but they all enjoyed the more active games immensely. They especially liked the Polaroid camera as they were excited to see themselves and were fascinated by how the photos were printed - even the people who work at fisherman's Rest loved it. The other job we did was to serve porridge to all the children. The length of the que emphasised the great work of the Goodwill project we were contributing to. It was an important job because the porridge might have been some of the children's only meals and encouraged them to keep coming back to school and were able to learn better as they had a full stomach. Feeling very satisfied after our tiring but enjoyable morning, we had our lunch overlooking the pool and mountains back at fishermens rest. We then walked over the Tilitonse community centre where we did much of the same as before. However, some of the Fishermen's Rest staff played music with a guitar-like instrument and drums and we participated in a not-so-friendly game of football with some of the boys. We then headed back to our lodge and wound down whilst waiting for Georgie and Julia to arrive with our locally sourced food. Julia did not disappoint and we had a lovely dinner of Chilli Con Carne!
Alice and Lucy
Alice and Lucy
Sunday, 24 July 2016
At the airport!
Day 1: Sunday, 24 July 2016
At the airport!
The plane has been delayed by an hour, but Leon has been there to supply our hunger since day, thank goodness! Since waiting longer we have learnt it might have broken and they might have to patch it together. We hope they use gorilla tape instead of duck tape as duck tape on it delete gorilla tape instead of duck tape as ducks aren't that cool. El can't stop laughing and Pokemon go won't give us any Pokemon to catch. We saw the spice girls picture and all (Grace) got excited as Brooklyn Beckham's mum was one of them. We can't wait to get to fishermens rest!
At the airport!
The plane has been delayed by an hour, but Leon has been there to supply our hunger since day, thank goodness! Since waiting longer we have learnt it might have broken and they might have to patch it together. We hope they use gorilla tape instead of duck tape as duck tape on it delete gorilla tape instead of duck tape as ducks aren't that cool. El can't stop laughing and Pokemon go won't give us any Pokemon to catch. We saw the spice girls picture and all (Grace) got excited as Brooklyn Beckham's mum was one of them. We can't wait to get to fishermens rest!
Thursday, 21 July 2016
Weekend 3 1st - 3rd July
Couldn't find the way to Larks 4
Not enough matches need more
Putting up tents was such a kerfuffle
Jonesy and Georgie made everyone chuckle
Kayaking on Weirwood
Whoever thought we could
Making wooden puppet spoons
Glitter in the afternoon
The kite would not take flight
Although we tried with all our might
The food was yummy
Made by mummy!
Sunday, 10 July 2016
Blacklands Farm - 1-3rd July 2016
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